Recently, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) demonstrated that Landsat 8 data can be used to show fire-affected areas and land-use type. Using spectral information to differentiate oil palm from acacia (a tree used for pulpwood) plantations and visual information to determine land parcel ownership (small/medium land owners with irregularly shaped fields of varying sizes vs. plantations with large regularly shaped rectilinear fields). With a pre-fire image collected on April 22, 2013 and a post-fire image from June 25, 2013, CIFOR discovered that in the region studied industrial plantations accounted for over a fifth of the burned areas and only 4 percent of the burned land occurred in natural forests.
For more details:
+ Nearly a quarter of June fires in Indonesia occurred in industrial plantations, CIFOR
+ Fires and Farms in Indonesia, NASA’s Earth Observatory
![Natural-color Landsat 8 image of an algae bloom in Lake Erie. The bloom appears green and contrasts with blue water.](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/erie_oli_2017269-1024x576.jpg)
Be Part of What’s Next: Emerging Applications of Landsat at AGU24
Anyone making innovative use of Landsat data to meet societal needs today and during coming decades is encouraged to submit and abstract for the upcoming “Emerging Science Applications of Landsat” session at AGU24.